2016 Oscar Picks!

I've taken 30 minutes out of my honeymoon to do the one thing I kind of enjoying every February; struggling to predict the Academy Awards to perfection. Only once I get a 24 out of 24 will I be free of the curse that the Bog Witch of the Greater Chicago Suburbs has put on me. Then, and only then will I be able to stop making these awful predictions. And also she'll turn my frog feet back into human feet. So here we go!

Best Picture: The Revenant

I like that this year doesn't feel like a complete lock on any of the movies, as The Big Short won the Producer's Guild award and I could see Spotlight also randomly winning out of nowhere as well. But I'll go with the most obvious choice and safest pick for Best Picture in the bear-heavy film The Revenant. Usually a good move to follow murderous bears.

Best Director: George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)

This is going to be a running theme, and probably a good reason to not trust my opinion on anything I'm predicting this year, but when in doubt, I'm just going to pick my favorite movie of the year, and most deserving (in my opinion) Mad Max: Fury Road. Plus, do we really want to see Iñárritu win two years in a row? What makes him so good? George Miller all the way.

Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight

Other than Bridge of Spies, I liked all the other nominees in this category more than Spotlight... But I'm trying to be realistic here, people.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short

Because it really deserves it, they're probably going to give The Big Short *one* award, and this is the easiest one to give it.

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)

It will be really funny if he still somehow manages to not win, but I don't think that will happen.

Best Actress: Brie Larson (Room)

I just watched this the other day (review to come next week), and yeah, she was pretty great in it.

Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone (Creed)

A fun win for an always fun category.

Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)

The Danish Girl may be this year's most blatant Oscar Bait, and I kind of hope it doesn't win anything at all on principle... But I'll just use my imagination really hard and pretend she's actually winning for Ex Machina.

Best Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road

Are there other movies nominated in this category?

Best Cinematography: The Revenant

I was really tempted to go Mad Max on this one, but realistically, if they want to give The Revenant Best Picture, they also have to give it a few other awards as well, and this one is easy to give it.

Best Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road

Do you remember those spiky cars in the beginning of the movie that attacked Furiosa's war rig? Did you know that those cars had the exact same number of spikes as a real life porcupine? That's just one fact that should solidify why the production design in Mad Max should win. I mean, did you watch the movie?

Best Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road

I haven't seen Carol, but is replicating 1950's clothes more impressive that creating an entire civilization of future people's costumes?

Best Makeup & Hair: Mad Max: Fury Road

90% of the people in this movie had great make up and hair effects. It helped make the characters who they were.

Best Foreign Film: Son of Saul

Haven't seen any of these, but I'll go with the popular Holocaust one.

Best Documentary: Amy

Also haven't seen any of these, but I'll go with the popular music biopic one.

Best Animated Feature: Inside Out

Good rule of thumb to think that the animated feature that also got nominated for Best Screenplay will win this one.

Best Visual Effects: Mad Max: Fury Road

Going with my Mad Max rule on this one, but wouldn't be surprised or upset if it went to Star Wars.

Best Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road

Do you remember how all the stuff was going on all the time in Mad Max, and the million things going on all had correlating sounds occurring? Just give them the award.

Best Sound Mixing: Mad Max: Fury Road

Ditto

Best Original Score: The Hateful Eight

Even though the only soundtrack I actually purchased this year and regularly listened to was Mad Max (hey, did you know I liked that movie?), and it didn't even bother to get nominated, despite the fact that the entire movie (a great movie that also got nominated for 10 Academy Awards, proving the Academy cares about it) was driven by the intense, electrifying Junkie XL soundtrack... ...out of the other nominated scores, Ennio Morricone's score was probably the next best. BITTER MUCH, SCOTT?

Best Original Song: “Til It Happens To You” (The Hunting Ground)

I don't know what this is, or what the movie it's from is even about, but I could say the same about almost everything else in this category. It has Lady Gaga in it. Sure. That sounds like it will win to me. WHATEVER.

Best Animated Short: The World of Tomorrow

Wedding planning caused me to have this be the first year in the last several years where I didn't go see the Animated Shorts showcase, so I don't really know what most of these are (I saw Sanjay's Super Team, though). Having looked through the descriptions and some pictures, I've come to the brilliant scientific analysis that The World of Tomorrow will win.

Best Live Action Short: Day One

I really don't know. That right there is a huge random guess.

Best Documentary Short: Body Team 12

This is the only one I've personally heard of, so sure, it will win...

I got a 16 out of 24... Not my worst, but certainly not my best! I botched the short films categories really hard.

[Bob Cole]"Which major category do you think gets it right, year after year?"

Maybe the Editing category. I just looked up the past winners, and I don't think there's a choice you could say is regrettable until maybe 1996's The English Patient (Which I've never seen, so that's where I have to stop).

If you want to see a cool video of another category that gets it decently right (except for maybe The Golden Compass?), here's every winner of the VFX Oscar in a big montage (sans last night's kind of surprising win for Ex Machina):

It's neat to notice the landmark films when they come up; the game changers. 2001, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Matrix, etc. Cool video for an award that features a lot of the most influential films of all time.

As for the Academy Awards broadcast itself last night, I thought it was one of the better awards shows I've seen in a long time, just in how many of the jokes hit, how it moved along at a decent pace, and some of the different stylistic choices. And they showed clips of the acting nominees, instead of just showing them in the audience, which is always a plus in my book!

My only major gripe with it (other than Spotlight winning Best Picture, despite me liking 6 films in that category more than it), was the freaking "play off" music during the speeches. The guy controlling the music was out of control last night. He ruined nearly every speech. Most people had that goofy song play over their final thought, when the person controlling it should have just let them finish their last sentence before hitting the button. You could tell a lot off the people were winding down. And they made Iñárritu look kind of stupid by not muting the dumb music while he was giving a long, important speech. I noticed that they didn't dare play music during Leo's tacked on global warming message after his thank yous. The show goes way over the time limit anyway, just let the people talk until they finish, unless they try and do over 2 minutes or something. The music this year was really bad.